Electric Vehicles: The Deep Tech Opportunity Beyond the Car

EVs are often framed as a substitution problem: replacing internal combustion engines with batteries and motors. But the transition underway is much larger than the vehicle itself.

Beyond the visible interface, the vehicle, there sits an entirely new technology stack spanning batteries, power electronics, charging networks, grid integration, and increasingly, software systems that manage energy and mobility flows.

Much like the personal computer created demand for operating systems and semiconductors, and the internet created cloud and data infrastructure, electric mobility is giving rise to a new deep-tech stack connecting transportation, energy, and software.

The last decade of mobility innovation was defined by ride-hailing platforms and logistics networks. The coming decade will be defined by innovations across the deep-tech stack. Understanding how this stack evolves will be key to understanding where India's next mobility giants will emerge.

For EVs to become a truly practical and preferred alternative to internal combustion vehicles, they must offer capabilities that go beyond simply replacing the engine with a battery. Achieving this requires building an entirely new layer of supply around the vehicle. Refuelling an EV, for instance, requires an infrastructure equivalent to the gasoline network that powers ICE vehicles today.

In the process, electrification opens up multiple new themes across the value chain and creates entirely new categories of companies. Think of EVs as mobile energy storage systems connected to both the power and the digital infrastructure.

At a high level, the stack can be thought of in 6 structured layers. The value chain map below attempts to capture all the layers.

One of the most critical structural challenges in India's EV ecosystem is the dependence on imported core components. Today, most Li-ion cells are imported, largely from China. Cells alone account for roughly 15-25% of the total cost of an EV, making them one of the most strategic components in the value chain. Over the last decade, Indian companies have become increasingly capable at pack assembly, thermal management, and battery management systems (BMS), but the underlying electrochemical technology -- cell chemistry, electrode manufacturing, and electrolyte formulation -- remains concentrated offshore.

This dependence extends beyond batteries. Motors, controllers, power electronics, and several critical semiconductor components are also heavily reliant on global supply chains. As a result, EV companies in India operate in an environment where supply volatility, pricing fluctuations, and geopolitical risks can directly affect product cost, availability, and margins.

Until domestic cell and component ecosystems mature, winning EV businesses in India must treat supply chain risk as a first-class system constraint: qualifying alternates, designing around availability, and building financial buffers for volatility. This creates a significant opportunity for companies building for these core components.

Electric vehicles create a new kind of lifecycle opportunity, particularly around batteries. Even when an EV battery reaches the end of its first life in mobility, it typically retains 70% of its usable capacity. This creates a significant opportunity for second-life applications, refurbishment, and secondary markets. Today, however, second-hand EVs often see 50% or more depreciation, even when the battery still retains substantial usable life. Companies that can leverage battery diagnostics, grading, and secondary market infrastructure stand to unlock significant value.

At the same time, rising demand for home backup and distributed energy storage opens another pathway. Batteries retired from vehicles can be repurposed and reassembled into smaller stationary storage systems for residential or commercial use, extending their economic life while reducing overall system costs.

Policy and digital infrastructure are beginning to support this shift. The government is exploring a digital identity layer for batteries -- similar to Aadhaar for citizens -- enabling traceability across the battery lifecycle. In parallel, the proposed India Energy Stack aims to standardise digital infrastructure for energy transactions, much like UPI did for payments.

Together, these frameworks could transform circularity from a CSR initiative into a foundational layer of the EV ecosystem -- one with its own economics, its own investable companies, and its own network effects.

Over the last five years, India has installed roughly 29,000 public EV chargers across the country. Yet the vehicle-to-charger ratio remains around 195 EVs per charger, compared with roughly 14 in Europe and 31 in the United States. India has a lot of catching up to do in this regard.

A large part of today's fast-charging infrastructure also relies on imported components. Power electronics for high-power fast chargers, often sourced from China, account for more than 30% of the total charger cost. Dependence on imported hardware creates challenges around reliability, maintenance, software updates, and long-term supply security. This opens a significant opportunity for companies that can develop and localise the power electronics stack -- designing systems optimised for India's grid conditions, heat, and cost targets.

Looking ahead, charging infrastructure will not exist in isolation. As EV adoption grows, vehicles and chargers will increasingly interact with the electricity grid. Technologies such as Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) allow EVs to not only draw power but also send electricity back to the grid when needed. In effect, EVs become distributed energy storage assets, capable of supporting grid stability, managing peak demand, and enabling higher penetration of renewable energy.

At scale, fleets of connected EVs could collectively operate like virtual power plants (VPPs), providing services such as frequency regulation, demand response, and backup power. Unlocking this ecosystem will require not just hardware but also digital infrastructure that can manage energy transactions, payments, and coordination across millions of devices. There is a need for GPay / PhonePe equivalent solutions to be built for energy.